According to the manual they use custom indium phosphide ICs on the input - seems to be thefastest semiconductor substrate material available (although it seems the actual devices arebuilt out of InGaAs built onto an InP surface).

InP technology is touted as being able to reach THz speeds BTW. Its also the most brittlesemiconductor - don't drop that 'scope!

Even if you can sample that fast, how do you put test leads on a circuit that is moving at a rate that necessitates that kind of speed? Seems like the capacitance of any test lead would wreck it. Crazy stuff.

At microwave frequencies all signals are carried by stripline or microstrip or coax or waveguide or similar,no issue with capacitance when a correctly terminated transmission line is used. Yes it is tricky to put testleads on a circuit, active probes have to have very small dimensions I think, and you'd normally design in testports I suspect! The manual mentions the probes can be upgraded for higher bandwidth in the future... Shudderto think how expensive the probes are actually.

I would love to know how many of these $500K scopes they sell a year and to what companies/individuals. Note normal 10 week delivery estimate, I suspect they build to order rather then ship from inventory.

What type of technology is used to make such a ($439,824) product? How do you sample at that rate? 160GS/s implies some sort of clock at 160Ghz. How is that done? I don't understand how this can be done at any price the speeds are so otherworldly.

Are you sure you don't mean a spectrum analyzer? I am at Agilent's site now and don't see any scopes like that.

Search google for "Agilent G-Rex". A few documents leaked with my code name. [G-Rex means Godzilla, but easier to type.]

There are 4 A/Ds sampling at 40Ga/s each. In front of each A/D is a 33GHz pre-amplifier. The best way to describe a pre-amplifier for an A/D is that it conditions the incoming signal for the very sensitive sampling hardware. (It is also where stuff like the attenuators and edge triggering flip-flops are located.) If you download the Infiniium 90000-X datasheet, you can see a picture of the front-end MCM (multi-chip module).

So that gives them 4 channels around 16GHz and then 2 channels of 33GHz by interleaving 2 of the A/Ds. That's all real-time and pretty straight forward.

To get to 60GHz+ they use frequency interleaving in front of the pre-amplifiers. By down-mixing signal content from 33 to 60GHz down to a range of of 0-33GHz they can sample "high frequency" content with their lower frequency A/D. Once sampled, software DSPs re-mix that content back into the 33 to 60GHz range. Then DSPs (which is probably just software running on the on-board PC) "stitch" together the native 0-33GHz content with the 33-60GHz content to create a 60GHz+ bandwidth single.

The stitching technique was first used by LeCroy a couple of years ago to boost their 6GHz real-time scopes to 13GHz.

What type of technology is used to make such a ($439,824) product? How do you sample at that rate? 160GS/s implies some sort of clock at 160Ghz. How is that done? I don't understand how this can be done at any price the speeds are so otherworldly.

Are you sure you don't mean a spectrum analyzer? I am at Agilent's site now and don't see any scopes like that.

Scope. I posted this later in my thread once I realized I was witholding information:

What type of technology is used to make such a ($439,824) product? How do you sample at that rate? 160GS/s implies some sort of clock at 160Ghz. How is that done? I don't understand how this can be done at any price the speeds are so otherworldly.

Are you sure you don't mean a spectrum analyzer? I am at Agilent's site now and don't see any scopes like that.

Scope. I posted this later in my thread once I realized I was witholding information:

Oh, and lets not forget the all important option sheet for this scope, wouldn't want anyone to be disappointed by buying just the cheap 'base line' unit. HP.Agilent was/is always big into options for their equipment, worst then buying a car.

What type of technology is used to make such a ($439,824) product? How do you sample at that rate? 160GS/s implies some sort of clock at 160Ghz. How is that done? I don't understand how this can be done at any price the speeds are so otherworldly.

Are you sure you don't mean a spectrum analyzer? I am at Agilent's site now and don't see any scopes like that.

Scope. I posted this later in my thread once I realized I was witholding information:

Oh, and lets not forget the all important option sheet for this scope, wouldn't want anyone to be disappointed by buying just the cheap 'base line' unit. HP.Agilent was/is always big into options for their equipment, worst then buying a car.